Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Allow me to share, for a moment, the card enclosed with my money this afternoon.

Imagine, if you will, the kind of slightly-sepia, slightly-faded, slightly-blurry faux impressionism one normally associates with pictures of a four-year-old couple in dress-up clothes, with “handpainting” on their little pink cheeks and the little girl’s hat and bouquet. Only this one has the feet of a man and a woman (he’s in casual khakis, she’s in an ankle length skirt and the kind of square-heeled pumps that middle-aged women in the Midwest think are dressy) standing symbolically on the bottom of a flight of steps.

I am stark naked. I have managed to check into my second hotel in two weeks with NO HOT WATER upon arrival. Sure, they fix it, but not in the 20 minutes I have to get ready. So Sexual Athlete knocks before I am dressed – for the record, had he turned up seven minutes later AS AGREED IN ADVANCE I would have been ready. So I let him in. I understand this is a fantasy for many men; certainly, it would save a bundle on frilly things. He hands me a gift bag, enclosing a gift box, enclosing a lovely white silk scarf in gift paper. I think it’s a Basic Instinct reference. Oh, dear. In the gift bag is also a card, in an envelope that clearly has my money in it. I leave it be, figuring I’ll count when he’s in the bathroom, but he wants me to read it. So I do.

I can’t get you out of my mind. I keep thinking about how much I enjoy talking with you, How great you look

Awww…it’s a prose poem…

When you smile And how much I like your laugh I daydream about you off and on all day, Replaying pieces of our conversation… Laughing again about Funny things you said or did

Um, yeah, like when I text you “Going to bed now!” at 9:30 so you’ll stop sending messages when I’m at home, trying to have Husband time?

I’ve memorized your face And the way you look at me… It melts my heart

Uh-oh.

Every time I think about it. And I catch myself smiling When I imagine what will Happen the next time we’re together.

1) That’s not where I’d put that line break.2) I know exactly what’s going to happen. We will fuck. You will pay me. You will shed body hair copiously. I will experience growing dislike of the way your mouth tastes. We will have reasonably quality conversation in which I slightly pump you for legal expertise and try hard not to be overly aggressive when you tell me things I already know. You probably won’t tip, but I have billed you for gas money this time and set a time limit I’m comfortable with, so I’m OK with that.

But wait, there’s more! Now the couple is sitting on the next couple of steps up. I bet the edge of the concrete is digging into their hips. His socks are lighter than his shoes. The edge of her hat is in her hand.

You must be something really special Because I can’t remember The last time

DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! EXAMINE THE FLUX CAPACITOR!

I felt so strongly about someone Even though neither of us Knows what the future holds I know one thing for sure –

You won’t be tipping (yeah, it’s redundant, but that’s what I thought).

You’re one of the very best things That’s happened to me In a long time.

There is an author credit. I hope it’s a pseudonym.

I thank him sincerely for the scarf and tell him the card is sweet. I mentally compose part of this blog as I give him head, and get involved enough in phrasing that he comes mostly in my mouth, ick, bleah, the hazards of being an artist. Spit, Mish, fake one, Cowgirl, real one, more Cowgirl, I get bored and decide, maybe I’ll come again, at least it will be interesting. He says, as I am about to come, “Show me you love me.” Will Robinson, you don't know the half of it...

We chat about a project I’m working on for awhile, then he pushes my hand down to his cock and we go at it again. He ties my hands loosely with the scarf – they’re wide apart, it’s purely symbolic - but his unsheathed penis is too damn close for my comfort. I think he finally gets it from my thighs of iron against his pushing (he says, "I’m not going to put it in you," but I’m still not OK with it anywhere near my bits), and suits up. Comes again. More chat. Doggie and a big finish for him in about four seconds flat – have to remember that for next time.

There is indeed no tip. Am I greedy, grasping, whorish? Damn straight. It’s only money. You have more of it that I do. And it’s the one solid way I know you truly appreciate what I am, and what I do for you.

Off to the gym, as I definitely need to work physically and hard today -yesterday was jaw-clenchingly full of paperwork. It's also another two-client day, so Gentle Readers, I look forward to considering your entertainment pleasure as I make it through "the moment".

Sexual Athlete today - he's been sending me texts about how he wants to "make me squirt." Um, buddy? 1) Jury's still out on squirting, but the one thing that is largely agreed is that it's rare and the woman has little to no control over it, let alone the man. 2) In the words of some immortal porn star, "Do I squirt? Well, I can pee, and I can make noises like I'm coming, so yeah, I squirt." And of course, 3) You have to make me come first. Which would involve, oh I don't know, listening. Though in the long run, he'd like to be a regular, so I probably should let him know some of this - gently - if I'm going to see him again.

Also NRA who is taking me to dinner prior, off the clock - although I agree with Compartments about my time is my time, I'd eat between appointments anyway, and this way it's paid for.

Monday, February 26, 2007

This is my favorite poem. It’s being read by the man who wrote it, Kenneth Koch. It’s not that long, so give it a shot. I’ll wait right here. Go on…

You want a social life, with friends,A passionate love life and as wellTo work hard every day.

The first years of my marriage, we were in each other’s orbit all the time – comfort came from Husband, lack of comfort hurt like hell. Much of my sex life was outside, but between the two, I was pretty set. And we worked all the time, together. When we met, we were together for two years before being separated overnight. I didn’t go to parties, I didn’t have friends, other than Best Friend living in a foreign country and Beautiful Girl whom I wasn’t that close to at the time, both circling in their own ellipses far away.

What's trueIs of these three you may have twoAnd two can pay you dividendsBut never may have three.

In the past five years, I started making friends. After Husband and I nearly divorced, I started meeting people I liked spending time with. I started to value connections more. I went to parties. And then I built my business, which tangentially sprung from the business Husband and I shared, and became its own little juggernaut. (I’m having dinner with a Governor later this year – the perverse part of me wants to refer to my other life). My work is largely my social life – I love my friends, but most of them I only see when work brings us together. We wouldn’t circle in the same orbits if we didn’t have the contractually obligated time, but work has acquired gravitational pull and that time has increased. I also moved farther from my husband. I’m on the road more. It’s taken a concerted effort to fight centrifugal force for the time and space and energy to be married, and it seems to be paying off – we both love being around each other more. And in the end, he is the refuge at the center.

There isn't time enough, my friends--Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends--To find the time to have love, work, and friends.Michelangelo had feelingFor Vittoria and the CeilingBut did he go to parties at day's end?

Now I’ve taken up whoring. And blogging. Both fairly time-consuming, on top of:

Being marriedLeading my businessPracticing/participating in my businessStill working with Husband on the shared businessArt modeling (part-time)Trying to write in my other fieldFiling taxes and doing bookkeeping for all of the above (did you know that bookkeeping is one of only two words in the English language with three sets of double letters back to back? A prize for anyone who finds the other one)Musing for a friend or twoMaintaining a relationship with LoverDelegating housework

When busy, my instinct is to take on more. I don’t know why this is. The money from whoring makes everything else run a bit more smoothly – the trade-off in time spent there has so far been repaid in rather urgently-needed cash. It also makes the blog more interesting, and blogging – or rather, the commitment to writing daily - makes the lifeline to the center that keeps everything else from spinning into the black reaches. As long as I can write, every day, there is one constant and universal law, one thing that I know is sustaining me as an artist and as a human being, that I will make time for, that encourages the intelligent life, so convinced of its own importance.

Homer nightly went to banquetsWrote all day but had no locketsBright with pictures of his Girl.I know one who loves and partiesAnd has done so since his thirtiesBut writes hardly anything at all.

I could live without a social life and friends. I could even live without a passionate love life. But I can’t not work hard every day.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Two false front teeth. Guitarist. I seem to have a thing for guitarists. This one was a street musician, we saw each other every day when I left my obligated-to-have-a-job job at the shoe store and went to my actually-makes-money-job reading tarot on the street. Another city. I carried a cardboard sign, the first summer it said "Fortunes Told $2", the next year "$3", the year I got smart, there was no price and I said "whatever you think it's worth". I wore a gauzy blue broomstick skirt and a brown velvet vest from Salvation Army, no shirt, no bra. This started the year I hated my parents. Fifteen.

I don't really believe in fortune-telling the way I don't really believe in astrology. That is, I ask people their birthdays in their new-hire interview. Squatting by a hot dog stand, it's easy to look at a teenage girl:

"Your parents don't understand you. You're ready for more responsibility but they just won't give it to you."

"OHMIGOD! BECKI! SHE IS SO RIGHT!!!!"

He comes up to me as I'm walking past his pitch, by the deep-fried stuff outdoor cafe corner, headed back to the bus. Pulls a coin out of the open guitar case.

"Tell my fortune."

I don't remember most of it, I always did past, present, future, the first two setting credibility for the payoff. What I do remember:

"You're going to jail tonight."

He laughed. I laughed. I saw him again the next summer, he'd been busted for heroin. That night.

Future, future, mumbo-jumbo, yeah, whatever.

I flirted with him all the next summer. Or rather, I did my subtle-as-a-brick version of letting him know I was interested. I wasn't smooth. He was perhaps 25. Maybe older. One night, we ended up in an apartment, garret really, the view was the roof of the museum. He was squatting at a friend's. He pulled my hair. That's all I remember. It must have been while kissing, but I don't remember that part. I asked him to pull harder. The tender parts of my scalp occupied me on the bus for days.

The next year, I gave him a book, 9 1/2 Weeks. Let's just say the movie has a more...sensual...take. In the book, there's blood. We went to his apartment, probably actually his, it was morning, I don't know why it was so early in the day. He tied me to the bed, beat my breasts with a hairbrush, fucked me with it, left it in me and left me there while he went out. I think it was my hairbrush. Perhaps he asked me to bring it.

Half an hour later, he returned. I said, "It would have been scarier if you hadn't left the radio on." I had bruises for days, black, then purple, then greeny-yellow that took forever to fade. The sheets were white. The radio was a clock radio. There was a window by the bed.

We finally fucked when I was eighteen, living in that city for a few weeks. He came over to my rented room, the house adjoined a wild area. We rolled on the hill under the trees, needles in our backs. His hand ran down my ear, found my hoops.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Every inch of my body, every fiber of my being is trying to hibernate. I'm so tired of being cold, windblown and slightly damp. I'm having great difficulty getting motivated, too - it's taken over a week to buy another phone card for the whore phone, I still haven't loaded up the minutes, and my personal phone is...somewhere. Maybe the kitchen? I can't find my checkbooks, they've been lost for three weeks and my only hope is that when the bank statement comes in I'll find the last check I wrote and it will have a clue to where the books might be. Without them, I feel completely out of control of my life.

Here's what I need to do:

1) Take advantage of having an hour to and an hour from the gym in the car with PowerGirl tomorrow. She knows what's going on, and I can load up the phone, dial up some clients, and get things moving.

2) Answer the 30 or so personal messages on the bulletin board, all potential clients whom I've ignored other than a quick note telling them I'm not ignoring them.

3) Use the empty days I have next week, since I was a Bad Friend and didn't go see my best friend, to book clients and to get my other life in gear. Wednesday's booked for Sexual Athlete in another city, and I'd like to try for another two-client day. Maybe I can get Ramen Guy to finally commit.

4) Catch up with nine million emails - well, actually, just over 400 - in my three inboxes. Maybe even go ahead and delete any that are more than a year old.

5) Lie on the sofa and masturbate repeatedly. No, wait, how did that one get in there?

Thursday, February 22, 2007

I spent the time before my second appointment in a state of mild agony. All the myths and fears about the vagina came up. Would it smell funny? Would it taste bad? Would it reach out with horrible tentacle teeth and suck me in like the Sarlac monster? (I freak out my gay friend S. by making my hands into a jaw with finger-claw teeth and making biting motions). I call Lover and a male friend for advice.

“You know what feels good to you, which is a huge head start. All girls are different, but it tends to be variations on a theme. And you pay attention to your lovers, which is the rest of the battle. If she makes a noise when you touch her that way, do it again. Then do it harder, softer, and in circles, then on to a different part but coming back later.”

And

“Just let her know that you love being with her and want to make her feel good. Really love her before you ever go down there. The more she feels like you really enjoy being with her, the better it will be.”

My day of mild mishaps continues as I drive to meet Shortish Guy and Hot Bi Chick. I leave a little late, my phone is still out of minutes, I get off at the wrong exit and have to turn around. But I do, eventually, make it to the Midprice Hotel, and there they are. Room 234. King-size bed, Jacuzzi tub, Shortish Guy smiling nervously as he opens the door, and Hot Bi Chick lying on her stomach on the bed, tight jeans, tight low-cut t-shirt, bronze spike heels with thin chains along the instep.

She is, in fact, hot. A little heavily made-up for my taste – I’ve heard Pam Anderson is gently lovely minus a few layers of spackle – but tall, shapely, pouty-lipped, multiply pierced and visibly tattooed. When there's ink on your wrists, it’s a pretty solid “f--- you” to Corporate America. I think, I’m sure she’s got more piercings…and I’m about to find out exactly where they are.

I stay focused on her, wary of any jealousy issues. I’ve taken off my leggings from under my long brown suede skirt, taken off my shoes, and I sit by the bed, resting my arm on the spread, my head near hers. We talk about shoes – always safe. They give me a glass of wine. I don’t drink, at all, but it’s clearly special to them, her favorite wine, and I wet my lips with it and hold the bowl in my hand. She complains that it “needs to open up,” which gives me an excuse to wait.

Hot Bi Chick takes the lead.

“I’m wearing too many clothes,” and with that, we all get naked. I try to step in and help her take off her shirt, but we all just shuck. She’s lovely. Completely shaven, soft little tummy, gorgeous breasts in a boring white bra – after all, she doesn’t have to impress, I’m here for her pleasure. She wants implants. I think she’s crazy. “I want them to be more like each other, and more in the middle.” Symmetrical and centered, says the writer in my head, realizing that no, honey, you don’t want implants, you want $10,000 of corrective surgery, Lindsay Lohan style, “$10,000 breasts are worth $10,000 because they look free.” Nevertheless, they are lovely. And the other piercing is clitoral hood. At least it will be easy to locate.

I kneel between them on the bed, him I could take or leave, she’s looking more appetizing by the minute. I lean in and kiss her lips, soft, gloss-coated, her tongue darts into my mouth and I gently suck it. I kiss her eyes, the corners of her forehead, the tips of her ears, licking the outer folds, her earlobes, moving down her neck and smelling her perfume, something I recognize but I can’t put my finger on. She’s responsive, enough that I wonder if she’s faking, but I’m the hired help, why should she bother? We’ve already talked about hey, if it’s not working, let’s laugh and do something else. I move between her breasts, the valley smells of more perfume, she says she put it on since it’s a special occasion. They are so soft. They overflow my hands, the nipples small for her size and gently pointed, very pinky-brown. I do the thing that men do to me (some women must like it or they wouldn’t keep doing it, right?), holding her breasts together and moving my mouth from nipple to nipple, sucking, licking, biting the amount I suspect a pierced girl would like. She moans. Shortish Guy talks dirty – he has checked in advance, can he talk dirty, can he slap her ass, my answer was yes, just don’t call me c--- or whore. She leans up and sucks my nipples, dark red-brown lip gloss rings my nipples. I kiss her neck again, licking with the tip of my tongue up one side and under the curve of her jaw. And I can feel it’s time to head south…

Her belly yields under my hands, I hold her hips and lick her navel, there’s a hole where she used to wear a 2-gauge ring. It’s a big hole. I kiss the inside of her thighs and lick her hip creases, she’s moaning and wiggling under my hands. She tastes, first, of deodorant – girls who shave completely use it to keep down razor burn. I make my tongue a point and slip it between her labia, first sliding upward, then returning to my starting point and using my tongue flat. She tastes like me, that slightly sharp taste from inside, and like nothing – like skin that’s been washed. Once I lick away the sharp, there’s no taste at all, just the slight sense that it’s not the inside of my mouth I’m licking. I think of all the times I’ve lain on my back and wished for a broad tongue doing something repetitive, firmly, and aim for below the piercing.

“Oh, God, she’s so good…” Hot Bi Chick moans. “Guys just want to eat the whole thing, girls know you have to stay on the clit…” Shortish Guy talks dirty some more. He’s not really relevant at this point, but I look up from her pussy and smile with my eyes so he won’t feel left out. She comes remarkably fast. I wonder if she’s faking, but she’s shaking and moaning. Feeling her legs convulse around my head is incredible, it’s one thing to bring off a man, but this is like discovering fire, so far minus the liver-eating bird part. We rest.

“Think there’s another one in there?” looking up at her, my head resting on her thigh. Shortish Guy says, “You want her to eat that hot little pussy again? You want that, don’t you?” Hot Bi Chick nods. I’m thrilled. It’s like Christmas morning the year I finally got a bike instead of a letter from Santa explaining how many older boys and girls were ahead of me on the list, thanks for the cookies, see you next year.

This time, I slow down a little, if I’ve made her come (or care enough to fake it), it’s ok, I didn’t suck. I toy with her clit ring in my teeth, gently tugging it while sucking softly. When I slide my finger inside her, she’s tighter than I expect, and I make a mental note to compare at home. I make the beckoning motion to hit the front wall, if the G-spot exists, I’m there for it. Her eyes half-close, she starts to moan again, and she spasms around my finger, she’s definitely not faking. (I realize as I write this, I want to fist her.)

We turn to him. Either they use condoms for everything, or her “I make him by non-lubricated, they taste better” is to make me feel less like the help. She sucks him while I lick his nipple. I suck him while she kisses him. We both lick his cock, kissing each other around it, I make a mental note to tell this to Guitarist, whose number-one fantasy is two mouths, one cock (his). Shortish Guy talks dirty some more. He’d be fine but for the money on his own. With her, I’m having a great time. It’s fun! It’s sensual! It’s hot! Go Team! She mounts him and rides until she comes again, I kiss her and hold her from behind, “you’re so hot, so beautiful.” I change places with her, I hope I’m close to as tight. She kisses my neck, she rubs my back, she kisses him. “You know,” I say after a few minutes, “Normally I’d just fake it at this point, but I really do want to come.” Shortish Guy talks dirty, Hot Bi Chick kisses me and holds my breasts from behind, it’s a lot like the thus-far-all-male scenario involving a pool table that is my sure-fire ‘come now’ fantasy. I do. Loudly. It’s a big one. They like it, they are only mildly surprised.

“Let’s let her rest a little,” he says about me. She straddles him again in reverse cowgirl and I watch her ride him, tell her how hot it is, how beautiful she is. She says she was watching the same thing while he fucked me. “Your turn to do the work,” she tells him, and he folds her in half and takes her on her back, fucks her hard while I whisper in her ear, hold them both. We end up finishing him by hand, Hot Bi Chick kissing him while I stroke him hard, minus condom. “That's the most I've ever seen you come” she says.

She runs the shower for me, I leave it running for them, my money’s on the TV, it was easy to earn, almost a bonus. They talk together in the shower. I muse on how it’s better to get my money at the end, then I’m not as worried about hiding it. Before I leave, she asks if I would ever do an overnight with them.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

I'm still musing over what to write about my second appointment yesterday, so I'm invoking my girlish right to dissemble and I'll get to it tomorrow. It was good - good enough to need to keep it private for another 24 hours. For now, some sidenotes...

...Yes, Anonymous, you can hire a whore without references (from previous women you have seen). Some SP's are "newbie friendly" which can mean anything from "I don't care as long as it's green," to "yes, but we have to meet for coffee first," to "you have to make a deposit by buying me a gift card first," all the way up to "I'll be checking your home address, correct phone number and confirming your employment." No shit, there are ladies that do this. Alternatively, there are 'verification services' such as DateCheck, that verify your identity and employment, and the whore in question can check that you have been verified without actually seeing your info herself. My policy is that since I meet everyone in a non-appointment setting first, I'm working more on my guts than on your references...

...Sexual Athlete texts me about three times a day and sends me several emails a day, many of them one-liner 'hi' messages. He asked if it was ok to do this, I said, sure, fine, but don't expect me to answer them all. I've a day saved for him next week and I'm hoping he arrives with an ipod...

...After my mini-Bonkathon yesterday, I have decided I can't stand to be away from Husband on one of the few weekends we'll have together this year (due to my other job) and am going to just be a Bad Friend, failing to fly to another state to see my best friend who is arriving from another country. Though I have to admit, it's 50-50 not wanting to be away and not wanting to be around her 7-year-old twins...

...Also yesterday, the bad parts of whoring (driving, getting ready, dealing with the details, fucking someone I don't really love being with) were outweighed by the good parts of whoring (money, having a nice time, money, money) to the point where I thought, hey, I could finance a couple of major non-frivolous purchases with a few more days like this. So I think I am going to try and set up a Bonkathon in the next two or three weeks - try to see two clients in a day to ease the whole getting ready and putting together a cover story process, once or twice a week until I meet my goals. After all, as I said to PowerGirl, when she asked how it went, "The memory of fucking them is already fading, but the money is still in my purse." I think it's actually less traumatic to do them in a row...

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

I’m already running late when I leave the house, get to the second set of lights, realize I’ve forgotten my laptop cord and have to go back for it. I’ll have time between two appointments, and I want to be productive with the hotel internet. I call Estimated Age: Mummy and move our appointment up half an hour, which he is totally OK with. Thank God. The scene at the hotel – the room isn’t ready, then it’s the wrong room, the second room smells like smoke, I realize in the third room that I’ve left my bag in the second room and then there’s no hot water. In the sink. In the shower, there’s no water at all. I have exactly fourteen minutes to be completely ready and I’m not wearing any makeup yet.

I take a baby wipe bath and shave with facewash gel, can’t get the legs so I put on stockings and hope he won’t want to take them off. EA:M knocks as I am putting on my shoes, but I just make it. Good thing disheveled hair reads as “sexy”…

We spend the first forty-five minutes talking and eating grapes and pineapple and nice juice, and I’m mostly interested. He’s fatter than I remember, but not objectionable. He spends the next forty-five minutes giving me a backrub, and he asks if I need to be done. I say I’m fine with about an hour longer, hoping against hope that he will tip, so that I don’t have to feel resentful and then change my damn policy. Again.

After enough gentle rubbing that I’m decently turned on, he goes down on me, asking some specific questions about what I like – questions a girl can actually answer in the moment, like, “Do you like my tongue right on your clit?” “Try it and see…Ummm…yes, but not too long, it’s a little intense.” And then he follows directions. As if he has actually listened to what I answered, and cares. It’s like a primer for my first on-girl appointment later tonight! (NB to oral givers reading this - and that should be all of you, boys and girls! - “What do you like” is not a good question, because my answer “Firm, steady pressure with the broadest part of your tongue moving vertically in the center of the area between, but not on, my clit and my vagina” is a bit too clinical for the moment and perhaps off-putting. (NB to self – how many Gentle Readers are copy pasting and saving that information in case we hook up? Probably best not to ask. Just be thankful they’re thoughtful, caring listeners.))

So oral is pretty good. Not Circus Guy caliber, but good. And I realize, when EA:M rubs his face into me, that a little pain there is exactly what’s going to make me come, but I’m not ready to be raw for a client, plus I still have to work later. So I fake it, despite him having told me he doesn’t want to fake it, and me promising not to. There’s a little ethical morass for you. Does it help when I say I desperately had to pee and was worried about farting, and coming is the fastest way to make them feel good about stopping?

I go down on him, he’s under-endowed and not trimmed at all, but it’s not bad, and at least I can take him in my mouth to the hilt. He asks me if I’ll lick his balls, they’re damn hairy but I’m game. I get on top, and the pressure of really, really needing to pee plus the joy of my total amusement at his thumb in my hip crease when he is aiming about four inches more to center, makes me genuinely come. Once again, it’s a little one. Once again, he’s blown away. Auntie Mames of the world, we’re going to start a damn club. The Shrieking Shaking Not Shy At All Club, and Milton’s wife and I will be the charter members. C., you in? Gillette can be president.

He asks if he can come in my mouth and I decline, telling him to warn me. When he warns me, I wait a comesecond, which is the exact amount of time needed to establish “I’m not disgusted by your semen, oh, no! I just want to watch it spurt! Yeah! That’s why I’m taking my mouth off!”

Afterwards, he tells me that he took up “the hobby” because he needed some excitement in his life and he’d already traveled all he wanted. I cannot imagine this. For me, there’s not enough travel in the world. “I have grandchildren, and yeah, that was exciting, but not like this.” I briefly visualize a towheaded child licking an ice cream (Rum Raisin and Pistachio) while EA:M bones the ice cream lady on a park bench. Then I visualize EA:M turning into a roast beef sandwich and getting the hell out of bed so I can shower.

He pays in full, plus a 25% tip, plus room. So yeah, I’ll see him again.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Normally, I wouldn’t – I’m worried about being tired, burned out, and/or sore – in fact, I turned down (by not calling back) a friend who was passing through town, but whom I recall being large and hard. Have to keep fit for the big race! But my best friend is flying in from a foreign country, to another state, and I really, really want to make it down to see her. Which, being as it's last minute, means coughing up for a plane ticket, hence my double-whoring-dip. Flavors: Rum Raisin/Pistachio (only old people eat it) and Bubblegum/Peppermint Candy (sounds like a good idea at the time, but so overwhelming you're sorry you got it halfway through).

Appointment One – Estimated Age: Mummy, whom I met at the Meet&Greet a few weeks ago. When he first called me over, my skin crawled, but he was so nice to talk to, I decided it was worth a shot. He was – surprise – genuinely interested in what I had to say as well as being genuinely interesting himself, polite, well-spoken, and since then has been nice as pie on the phone and in email. He asked what I’d like him to bring to nibble on, told me to get whatever hotel I was comfortable with, “after all, there’s not much good in your area under $100 a night, right?” and wants me to bring lotion so he can rub me all over. Which, given my level of winter dry skin, may end up being the best part of the whole bargain. I’m curious about what being with EA:M will actually be like, but hey, he’s old, right? How long can he last? And he’s planning on snacking and back-rubbing in our 90 minutes, so I’m hoping it will be pleasant and sweet, not too much wear and tear on the merch.

And speaking of the merch...

Appointment Two – Shortish Guy and Hot Bi Chick. I’m taking his word for the relative hotness of his early-20’s girl, but I hope I like her, because mostly, that’s what he wants to see. Now I like girls – I think they’re soft and curvy and smell real pretty. But I’ve never “been with” a girl. I’ve been in a few situations where another girl was present, and I’ve made out a very little bit with my friend Beautiful Girl as well as sharing a cuddly bed with her a few times. No matter how much of a dog Hot Bi Chick turns out to be – and let’s face it, she’s with Shortish Guy – I’m all about her face, her mouth, her breasts, her thighs. But when it’s time to be faced with the dumb starling, the sweet fat sheep, the rabbit without an ear, I’m not real sure what to DO.

Right now, I’m developing a strategic plan of Avoiding Thinking About It. With some added Mental Incredulity at having signed up for this one. And a brief foray into How To Get Her To Shower If She’s Nasty.

Gentle Readers, I seek your aid, as fervently as the president seeks democracy in Iraq, but with far more credible hope of achievement. When faced with the furry little friend, what do you do?

The lovely Padme has interviewed me for her blog, Journey to the Darkside. If you'd like to get to know more about my life, and get a peek at two pictures posted exclusively there, check it out. She asked some great questions about the arrangements in my relationships, which both lets me share more and neatly solves the problem of not wanting to put too much exposition in this blog!

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Lately, I’ve also been working as an art model. Mainly, it’s cold and bits of me fall asleep, but it’s also lovely to sit in one place, no phone, no ‘net, no obligations but to hold still (no wonder I’m a closet submissive). The art students often ask how I manage to hold still, and I say, “Well, it’s great thinking time.”

He walks by, looks me up and down, looks away. Once around the fountain, he’s back. “Are you working?”

“Yes.”

“How much for an hour?”

“Two hundred.”

“Do you do anal?”

“Two-fifty.”

We cross the street to his hotel, the tour bus stopping short, I see the driver in the giant front window give the same look, and I smile and wave. Up to the 24th floor, express elevator, the room is freshly made up, white towels, white sheets.

“May I see your ID, please?” He holds it with his finger over the address, I check his name and picture, he’s from somewhere else, so not a cop. We are in a country where our transaction is technically legal, and also less of a big deal, but it’s still best to check. I phone and leave a message, the room number, when I expect to finish. He lies on the bed, half sitting, there are seven pillows on each of the two beds.

“You’re so hot.”

“Thanks, you’re hot, too. What do you want to do first?”

“Do you kiss?”

“Not your lips…” and I move between his legs and unbutton his jeans. His cock is very soft, usually they’re already hard by now, but it’s nice to take him in my mouth without choking.

“Mmmmm…I love your dick, it tastes so good…”

He lets me suck for awhile, then “Turn around, I want you in 69.”

He buries his nose in my pussy, licks me while I suck him, rubs his mouth up and down me. His cock hardens in my mouth, his licking gets more frantic, his tongue slightly rough on my clit and the soft area below, so good to have touched.

“I want you on your knees.”

He slides to the edge of the bed, stands up, I kneel on the carpet and suck his cock again, running my tongue around the head, taking the length into my mouth and moving up and down while my tongue presses underneath. He reaches down and grabs.

“Remember, they’re pigtails, not handlebars,” I say with difficulty around a mouthful of cock.

He loosens up but still holds on, pulling my head onto his cock, the head bumping the back of my throat, I gag slightly and hold the base more firmly as a buffer, my curled fingers hitting my lips.

He pulls me off his cock. “Stand up and turn around. I want you bent over the bed.”

“Just a minute,” and I go to my purse, get a condom, kneel on the bed to put it on him.

I press my hands into the bedspread, my skirt so short it doesn’t need my help to slide up, display my ass in orange thong and black fishnets, the kind with the big diamond shaped holes. The spike heels make me tall enough to lean back and rub against his ass. He puts his hands on my ass, rubs my skin, grabs my hips to pull me back and rub against me, the fishnets rough between us.

“Can I rip these?”

“You rip, you tip.” They’re expensive.

He tears them open and slides into me from behind, pulling me apart to let him in, then holding the bones of my hips and fucking me hard.

“Oh, yeah, fuck me with that dick, yeah baby...”

He pushes me forward onto the bed, I’m on my hands and knees, he thrusts again and pulls out, climbs over me, lies on his back.

“Get on top.” I straddle him on my knees, rub the head of his cock back and forth along my pussy, get it wet, make me ready. He holds the tip at my entrance, and I kneel lower, sliding him into me. He grabs my hips again and thrusts up into me, his cock brushing my cervix, his pubic bone pressing into my clit, his hips against mine, spreading me wider around him. He pulls down the front of my tank top, admires my bra and pulls it down too, taking my breasts in his hands, pulling me towards him, licking and sucking my nipples, pushing my breasts together to alternate between them, rubbing his face, his tongue on the flesh. I draw him in and out, pausing at the top to feel the head of his cock almost slide out and then pierce me again, that little ripple at the top.

“I want your ass.”

“OK, but really slow and gentle at first, please.”

“OK.”

My ripped fishnets flutter around my ass, I hand him the bottle of lubricant and he slides a finger into me.

“You’re pretty tight.”

“So go slow.”

He slides another finger in, swirls around, back and forth, and I concentrate on relaxing. I reach back to check the condom as he positions himself at the entrance, then pushes. I remember the first man who ever put anything in my ass, “Push, go poo, push” and release. He slides into me, slowly at first, until he can feel me loosening a little.

“OK, fuck me, baby. Use that dick in my ass. Come on, yeah, you know I want it, you know what I like. I love your big dick, I love having your dick in my ass, yeah, give it to me.”

He comes in nine thrusts, I feel him harden right before he shoots, very hard, painfully hard, thank god it’s only right before he comes. We breathe for a moment.

“Hold on to that, OK?” I tell him, and he grabs the base of the condom while I wiggle off him.

The hour is nearly up. I step into the bathroom and clean up, thankful for the mess containment of safer sex. He cleans up, too, and then presents me with my fee and another 80 for tip.

“Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome. Is there any way to get in touch with you if I come back here?”

I write my number on a piece of hotel stationary, sign my name with a big swoopy Y.

I leave the room, duck through the fire door into the stairwell, take off my skirt, my ripped stockings, my tank top, throw on a clean dress. Knock on the door –

Lover opens, grabs me, holds me.

“Well, that was fucking fantastic.”

He nods agreement, his face in my hair. “You never say ‘dick’.”

“I know, I hate that word, it always sounds like something small. Plus it means ‘jerk’.”

“Even your voice didn’t sound like you.”

We fuck again, his cock in my ass this time bare, hardening again just before he comes, just before I come, vibrator pressed tightly to my clit. The sex is very different, even though he is the same man, I am not the same woman. Afterwards, he holds me, I give him back the fee but keep the tip. “I’m going to use it to pay for the boots.”

“You could have kept the whole thing, I was prepared for that.”

“Maybe next time. Probably next time. Will you still be a good tipper?”

“Long as you’re still such an amazing fuck.”

And I hit him with all seven pillows, one after the other, hard as I can swing while he fends me off laughing.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Black Tie Optional; Cleavage Required. (http://middleurge.blogspot.com)“It had been so long since she’d worn something like this, I had to keep checking in and making sure she was really comfortable with appearing in public looking this… well, sexy.”

Don’t Be A Blog Playa (http://marketingwhore.naughtyblog.net)“Blogging is often treated like dating, where folks fall in love with setting it up, posting some ramblings, and when no one gushes and fawns all over them, they move onto the next one.”

Eclectic Slut part one (http://junohenry.wordpress.com)“As we lay, limbs entwined and tangled, realising that we couldn’t stop touching each other even for a second, the conversation returned to one we’d started earlier… about control and submission.”

You might, Gentle Readers, observe the hour of this posting and conclude that the salmon has been landed...

PowerGirl and I drive outside the city, we have done twenty minutes exactly of shoe shopping and vowed to return, rushed into the slush and onto the icy highway by Folk Rocker’s show. We still miss the opening act. I am tired of being late for things, I’ve been so prompt until just lately, but it’s not too late, I will re-synch with the schedule of the world.

Folk Rocker is in rare form. I realize that clearly, his life has not gotten better. The protests, formerly a bit requisite, the angry white guy who truly does understand but can’t quite get the distance for irony, or the closeness for empathy rather than sympathy, have deepened, connected to something broken in him. Everyone makes better art when they’ve been broken. Not just the slog through almost-fame and almost-ease, but the place that bears the strain and fights and loses, the caryatid finally fallen under her stone.

(Lover’s art got better after we had a true breakup, not just a break. I don’t think it’s just practice. It was the only time I’ve seen him weep.)

He does not open with the song about love and the rose, he is no longer clinging to that illusion. He is in a different key, ‘a lover is more condoling.’ The venue is a church, and he frequently looks to God, who is, I think, in the best seats (in the bodily church, the uncushioned pews make our asses numb). There is a new song, about being broken, and wanting union and faith, and running out of everything, and when he sings it I want more than anything to go with him to the hotel, wash him, lie down with him, give him my body and all that he wants from it, no requests necessary, not even the effort of asking, receive, receive. It occurs to me that this is the secret to, if not good art, at least good tragic performance. The audience should want to fuck you until you feel better.

After the show, PowerGirl and I wait patiently in a pew, near the line of adoring admirers with CD’s clutched in fingers trembling to make the compliment, ask the question that will connect them. Folk Rocker sees me over the shoulder of a fan he hugs, I smile and wait, I am not part of the line, I am not a smile-and-hug, I’m with the band.

Sadly, the band is staying at the venue manager’s house.

She’s fantastic, a clutter of red hair and photography and teenage slightly insolent son and young getting-into-Shakespeare son and tea mugs that must be washed before Folk Rocker pours. PowerGirl anchors a sofa corner, I wash the mugs, and Folk Rocker tells me he’s being minded, he’s a guest, he reassures me, bless him, though I understand. I look fantastic. He notices. We touch as much as we can, and the unwatched pot boils damn fast. Yes, things are worse. I wish, I wish, I wish. I say, “I hope next time...” I think, I will purge you. I will absolve you. I will not heal you, but I will open the door to the recovery room. Part of this I voice, and he, also, knows it to be true.

Everyone watches everyone else’s videos on YouTube. Folk Rocker and I sit side by side. We walk out to the car, and PowerGirl warms it up as I go to him. Shaking in the cold, no time to waste, at least, in this moment only, we are in the same place at the same time. My mouth is on his, we breathe the same breath, I softly suck his tongue, he moves his mouth over mine.

“It would have been lovely.”

“It will be lovely.”

PowerGirl speeds us home, and I write this in the car, gloves insulating my thighs from the bottom of the cold laptop. We stop at 24-Hour Fine Food and gather yogurt, grape leaves, two-bite brownies. The deli guy flirts with me, I flirt back, Lebanese men always love me. I think of my brother, six blocks over, I have not called, he has not returned my calls in five months. The only way to see him is to leave a message: “I’ll be at Restaurant at noon tomorrow, call me if you won’t be there.” I want him, would have him were he not gay, HIV+, and my brother, in that order. I wonder if I come back in the morning if he will be there, organic this and that, swiping the bank card, perhaps meeting my eyes and smiling over gourmet cheese, both knowing that even a hundred lovers are not enough, we have to give, we have to receive, we have to matter and it’s the cock that tells us so.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Folk Rocker is in town, or rather, he and I are in the same town at the same time. He called a few days ago, he was already there, free from the tour manager and handlers for three whole days, released like a salmon. If he had let me know the week before I’d have moved – not heaven and earth, but definitely my schedule, to get there.

We met in Amsterdam – he opened for my high-school favorite, and I liked his music, politically edgy, praising of women of a certain age, the opening song, about love (they’re all love or politics, sometimes both) and a rose, gripped me and lifted my guts – I’m here, I’m in Amsterdam, I’m at the Paradiso, there were tickets left even though I found out three hours ago, and when the guys lounging on the front steps in the last of the cold June sun asked about my bike and found out I was American, I asked them what *they* did and when they said, “Ummmm…we play music…” I realize, they’re the band.

Later, I’m with the band. In the bar at the Holiday Inn, a roomful of recoverings, the table full of orange juice and Sprite and club soda. The tour manager has a bum knee, and I do a little acupressure and massage. The compact drummer, perfectly formed at 5’0”, tells me the story of his wife’s soul, and how it’s carried with him. I curl into the guitarist’s arm, and make eye contact with Folk Rocker. Later still, on the steep Dutch stairs, he is headed for bed and I am headed for the washroom (only North Americans are so coy, it’s the ‘toilet’ everywhere else) and we meet on the landing. We do not touch. He looks. I say, “You’ll be glad in the morning.” He says, “Yes, but it’s dreadful now.”

Another country. He opens with the song about love and the rose again, opening again. I end up with the guitarist, and in the tiny room of a British hotel, we make out passionately, his nipples are incredibly sensitive, he fucks me with his fingers from behind. I kneel, and he comes on my face and in my mouth, then uses his hands to rub it over my face – it is so loving, so gentle, he is so amazed, I am blissful with how much gratitude is in the world and touched that he steps into the bathroom of his own room and shuts the door to smoke. The next morning, I kiss the tour manager in his room. In the lobby on the way out, Folk Rocker is eating breakfast, and I wave. He looks. I look back. He does not know why I am still there in the morning.

Milwaukee. Oxford. Washington DC and the story of how, after a failed affair that turned ugly, he has committed again, he wants to see if it can possibly be worked out, he must be able to say in ten years to the children, I honestly tried my very best. We shiver on the bench outside the club while a strange 70’s cult band plays.

The connection hasn’t caught. I want to say something about fly-fishing here, but I don’t know anything about fly-fishing, so I will say instead that I do not want to scare the prey.

Tonight, another missed connection. My thing runs late, he leaves from his show to the next location. It’s only an hour, tomorrow I will hear the song about love and the rose and he will, at last, be opened by someone else. I will say my name “plus one” and Folk Rocker will carefully not look at me during the show, and I will let him know that Power Girl will be ok driving back to our hotel alone.

The Holiday of Love has once again arrived, and though your heart yearns to spend a cuddlesome evening by the fire, where the sweet nothings exchanged are only a prelude to the hot, lubricated passion on the bearskin rug; in which you and your beloved will out-bonobo Casanova and his Top Five in the space of the mere hour betwixt the children’s bedtime and the moment you drop from the exhaustion of yet another thankless work day in which your dignity (not to mention your libido) has been crushed beneath the knock-off-of-a-knock-off-Prada snow boot of your whiny, undeserving boss and the meaningless chatter of your fellow drones; you are in fact more likely to spend it wishing you had bought – or been given – a nicer/more expensive/more appropriate present, then dropping off after a half-hearted mounting attempt during which you actually pictured Pamela Anderson, Yasmin Bleeth, and for some of us, Eddie Izzard, in a vain attempt to get off a medium-sized one instead of one just good enough to stop.

Gentle Readers, for those hunting for an alternative way to spend this, most over-marketed of holy days, I present:

A Primer on Negotiable Affection, in Honour of St. Valentine’s Day

Option AYou cruise the streets in the seediest area of town and pick up a hitchhiker who offers to suck you off for $50. You bargain her down to 40, then when she passes out you bareback her and leave her at the next gas station. Later, you develop an oozing sore on the side of your scrotum that just won’t go away.

Option BYou approach a likely lady in a hotel bar – short skirt, lots of makeup, stiletto heels. Her boyfriend, Vito, appears from the men’s room just as you think you’re about to close the deal. Cost of setting broken nose – about $475.

Option CYou browse websites or social sites dedicated to ‘the hobby’ and pick out a lady you like. Maybe her pictures are great, maybe she’s gotten great reviews. That’s right, reviews. Other gentlemen she has seen have posted information about their time with her, how much they paid, whether she tried to upsell you for additional services, looked like her pictures, showed up on time, seemed clean and sober, was a C&D (Cash-and-Dash), right down to how much makeup and perfume she wore and whether she had stubble. Not only do you know more about what you’re getting, you know that other fellows have seen her and she didn’t arrest them, impound their car and add their mug shot to an embarrassing website that will cause your co-workers to abruptly stop talking each time you approach the break room.

Her website says call her with your references (What is this, a job interview?). You give her the names and contact information of other ladies you’ve seen (usually three). Now it’s her turn to research. She calls or emails the ladies with your information – usually a physical description, your phone number, email and internet handle, plus the info you gave her about when and where you saw the lady she’s calling.

“Great time at the Comfort Inn! She’ll remember my enormous Manhood! It was the biggest she’d ever seen!”

The ladies try to remember you: “Let’s see, balding, paunchy, middle-aged, Comfort Inn near the airport, I told him he had a big one...can you be more specific?”

They note whether you smelled nice, paid in full, had bad stubble (works both ways, buddy, ask me about my beard burn) wanted more than one shot, and were easy to get off. Most importantly, they’ll tell whether you were a NC/NS (No-Call-No-Show), a tipper, or an asshole.

You and the lady confirm by phone an hour or two before your appointment. You arrive, check out the room to make sure there’s no friends hiding in the closet and lock the door – or she does if it’s at your room. She wants her money up front, on the table, and without talking to her about it. If she’s smart or doesn’t trust you, she discreetly counts it and hides it. You chat. You ‘get comfortable’. You both watch the clock while trying not to get caught watching the clock, and you leave with a hug when the time is up. She emails you to say she had a nice time and she hopes to see you again. You spend the next week and a half pestering her with text messages, emails and voice mails, until you realize time is money and she wants you to book before she talks to you again.

Behind the scenes...the very smartest girls also search your name on the hobbyist boards, checking to see if you post mean reviews or racist comments. They’ll check the lists of “Good Boys” and “Bad Boys” posted in the deny-it-exists Ladies-Only area (I suspect the men have similar lists in their private area). They’ll find out if you have a rep for seeing streetwalkers, if you’ve bragged about barebacking, if you shorted the fee, and if you were dumb enough to mention any of these things on other boards.

It’s not all that safe – but hey, Ebay taught us we can trust a million strangers based on their feedback from other strangers. So why not in this venue, too?

As for me, I'm spending Valentine's with Husband (when he gets home from work), pizza and cupcakes. Meanwhile I'm wading through pm's and e-cards from clients, and sending out a few myself (go, marketing!). Lover is far away, and he knows better than to try to celebrate this particular holiday with me.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Ikura, Joto, Kiku, Sapporo, I can write their names in hiragana now, I can sound out parts of the menu and the waitress tells me, "Nihongo wa ichiban!" which means, “Your Japanese is very good!” which means, your Japanese is very bad. The travel books and my teacher and my friend the translator tell me that you’ll know you speak good Japanese when people stop observing that you’re speaking Japanese.

The train comes around, twenty cars, each with two little plates or a plate and a blank space where a plate used to be, little beige plastic geta-shaped plates, two ridges to sit on and a wide, slightly dished body for tiny bright green seaweed salads wrapped in thin black leather seaweed, maguro sushi, hamachi rolls, lots more that I barely know the names of, that I want to know, I want to impress my husband and the playwright from New Jersey, I want to be able to say, "Ja, onegai shimasu" right after the four-foot crinkly-faced waitress says "O-cha mumble mumble shimasu?" instead of having to look at her and the tea and the page of the textbook in my head before managing, “Yes, um, hai,” and doing the head bob bow that looks automatic in a Japanese.

The chef looks up from cutting maki sets, dipping the blade in water between the cuts, clapping his hands before touching the rice—is it an offering to the gods? an honoring of the rice? some sort of look-my-hands-are-clean thing?—and holds a paper towel on the tracks for the next go-round. Too much sushi, slow down, take some. The train is a murmur under the baby at the table near us whose father keeps stepping up to the bar for another plate of unagi, mother with a stack of little plates and a red mark under her left eye. The train goes halfway around the oval, twenty cars of dollar-ninety-five sushi, which is why we drove all the way to Shawnee, on the Kansas side. Which is why my husband and the playwright from New Jersey think we drove all the way to Shawnee.

The train comes around again, I’m stuffed but now there’s gyoza and scallops in spicy mayonnaise and little squares of chocolate sponge with coffee whipped cream icing light as getting away with it. I go to the bathroom, cell phone in my hat in my hand, call from the stall, all Japanese restaurant bathrooms are like this, grey linoleum or ugly middle-green tile, fluorescent lighting, as if the hanging tea-towel curtains with the samurai or the kabuki players are actually dividing Japan from an American gas station somewhere on I-95. I leave a message, like always, nothing means ‘I’m thinking of you’.

First sushi: Nineteenth birthday, Trevor G---, Joto, Tampa, black lacquer tables, we sit in chairs because the tatami rooms are full of friends of Burt Reynolds and his waitress. There is an aquarium—there’s almost always an aquarium, like having a pasture outside a steakhouse. I like everything except sea urchin, which sticks like peanut butter and tastes like brine. First initiation: I take my mother to sushi lunch, remembering to take care, to start with California rolls, crab stick, cooked shrimp, the last outposts of the familiar. American before Japanese, sushi before sashimi, yaki, cooked, before nama, raw. First lesson: Never eat sushi in a landlocked state, say, Idaho. First date: my then-boyfriend and I go to Sushi-Jo in Atlanta, eat tuna sashimi and fight, filling up on rice before opening for Hole and setting the pattern of the fight that lasts through the six six-hour trips from Tampa, through the engagement, the wedding, the marriage. First time: apparently, he thinks I don’t read the Amex bill, eighty dollars and fifty-seven cents at Amari, in Vegas, another hundred and twenty at the Orleans when he was theoretically staying with his mother. I don’t give a shit about the Orleans, fuck her in the lobby under the giant alligators if you must, but sushi is different.

I wash my hands for the look of the thing, save the damp, crumpled towel to open the door, avoid touching the smeary metal pushplate. The curtains are hung to shoulder height, in case you’d like to hide your face as you emerge from the completely unconcealed doors, and my hands are fumbling with my hat and my phone, the curtains catching in my hair. For a moment, I’m stepping out of the bathroom at Kiku, my veil catching on the curtains, this time cherry blossoms, surprised that no-one in the restaurant is looking at me or the groom or the officiant or our two best friends who later will not ask us to be part of their wedding party. It’s sushi happy hour—probably excitement enough.

“Excuse me,” says the woman with the red mark under her eye, and I think about saying “Honey, he’s not worth it,” and almost choke from not giggling at the cliché. We’re white, we’re in Shawnee, we eat sushi, we have doors that bang us in the night and husbands who throw coke bottles and don’t, really don’t, mean to hit us.

Her husband is feeding the baby with alternate bites of plain rice and yogurt from a tub. My husband is watching while the waitress counts the plates. I pass the tatami rooms where we knelt in October, me and the musician and the girl who loves me no matter what I do. Our knees fell asleep and we had to sit, legs in the pits for Anglo legs beneath the tables, leaning back against the floor chairs. This was before the coded phone calls, after Las Vegas but before Columbus, and we talked about Trashgirl and my husband, and the musician’s wife’s weight problem, and the girl’s boyfriend, the Penis Flytrap. We drank pots of green tea and ran back and forth to the train, shoes off, shoes on, bringing each other little things to try, challenging each other to stack the most plates, speaking as much Japanese as we could muster with the waitress, and I was proud that I could sound out “Sakura” on her mini-kimono. We sat through dollar-ninety-five time, we stayed through the homecoming dance kids at the teppanyaki table, commenting on their dresses, how young they looked, how old they looked. And then we went back to the hotel, where we shared a big king bed and the musician and I did the things we could do without waking the girl, did the things that led to Columbus and not caring and phone calls in the bathroom. The things that led to not eating sushi with the musician anymore.

The playwright from New Jersey has picked up my coat for me, and looks around, but I don’t carry a purse. The train of plates is half-empty, but we are all full, we have gorged ourselves on tiny bites, we have already crammed down one last thing. We bow to the chefs, and to the tiny waitress who tells me to come back soon, and pass through a longer set of curtains and out into the parking lot, where "arigato gozaimasu" echoes behind us in the metal voice of the electronic greeting speaker. I know this one, I know why it’s here and what it says. And in my head it’s clear. “Thank you. Come again.”

Monday, February 12, 2007

I've been doing my best to do a post every single day - as a writer, it's good discipline, plus I feel like I'm stockpiling content so that if I really need a few days off, you'll have archives to browse until I post again.

But for general reference - how often do you actually visit? And do you read only what's posted that day, or do you scroll back to the last place you read?

Thank you, and I will send the other 3/4 of this charming picture (of me) to anyone who responds to this post with information on their...ahem...reading habits. Because hey, you get what you pay for, right?

Sunday, February 11, 2007

...Checked into a hotel for a real-life reason with a female business associate. I meet her in the lobby to go for dinner, and she says, “This place is Hooker Central! A woman just got in the elevator in a tank top, wrap skirt and platform sandals!” (it’s ten degrees out). I, meanwhile, am thinking that if I want to do any business after my associate flies out tomorrow, I will need to move next door to the Radisson. There is no way a client walking through the dark, smoke-smelling hallways here would believe I’m worth what I charge. The next morning, I am in my room talking on the phone very loudly and with the Do Not Disturb sign on, and a man I think was maintenance opens my door without knocking. I yell “Occupied! Go away! No!” and phone the desk to complain...

...When my friend PowerGirl (knows) dropped me off at the airport, I told her that I was filled with the urge to respond, “Actually, I’m a whore,” when my seatmate asks me what I do. Sadly, on both outbound and inbound flights, I sit alone...

...Feeling astonishingly adventurous, I spend time perusing the clearance rack at Urban Outfitters (or, as I like to think of it, Hipper Than Thou) and try on a black, flowy, smock-like garment that should make me look like a baby hippo, but against all odds, does not. I am so mystified that I purchase it...

...I realize that Lover has made hardly an appearance yet within these posts. I can’t think where to start. My first spanking, at the Mississippi Welcome Station? Masquerading as a streetwalker in Toronto? The time we used the buckle end? Hmmm...

My friend E is the most sexually free woman I know. She’s luscious and lovely and amazingly creative. Once I helped her set up her boyfriend and a virgin, but that’s another story. This boyfriend, also sexually free and an ex-lover of mine, was oh-so-into her. But he kept looking occasionally, as men are wont to do.

Enter Toni. E’s Boyfriend is watching Toni and liking what he sees. We’re all in a show together, and I watch E notice, encourage, and then start to get a little nervous. Boyfriend is getting very, very into Toni, and Toni’s not an open-relationship-secondary-person type of girl, she’s a want-him-for-myself, crashing-in-talons-first, valkyrie in heeled boots and big tits.

One night, after the show, Boyfriend finds a basket of fruit and a note in his dressing room. The note is a deeply erotic poem, and tells him to be backstage later that night for a meeting. He knows it’s from E, this is her kind of thing, she’s fantastic at this game. He showers, changes, and waits at the appointed time and place.

A woman walks in. It’s Toni, he recognizes the sound of her heels on the wooden stage. In a panic, he starts to think about how he will get rid of her before E arrives, will he be blamed, what’s going to happen? And in comes Toni.

“I never had a man send me poetry like *that* before.”

Same poem. Same fruit. Same time and place...set up by E.

They fuck. It’s good. And Boyfriend, when he tells me the story, tells me “After that, I only thought of Toni as E’s creature.”

Toxicology, Part Two

You’ve read about Circus Guy, one of the clients I actually like and look forward to seeing. I came with him. I find him physically attractive. I feel that I’m complementary to him, that I have some crazy to give him, that his life will be better for knowing me. I told him personal stuff about my real life. He knows my real name. I sent him an email saying what I great time I had and how I was looking forward to seeing him again.

Today, the Day After, I get an email.

Hi, I had a wonderful time myself. You are so sexy.

Tip #2. Never count the money in front of you regular clients. This is very insulting (and yes I was). These relationships are based on trust just like any other. I'm sure you didn't know this since you are new to this. Forgiven.

#3. For any clients never charge them for the room.

#4. Reduce the rates for your regulars 25 to 50 dollars depending on how much you like them.

I'm not trying to be cheep or funny. you can check these tips out with the other girls or just ignore them all together. Certainly it is up to you.

I think that's enough for now. More tips to be given after the next time I see u.

His email starts with Tip#2, but hey, proofreading is highly overrated. Or maybe there was a Tip #1 – I wonder what it was?

Tip#1 – You should ask for your money up front so you can count it in the bathroom like all the other girls do, not at the end of the appointment which makes you feel less tacky and the client more trusted but is harder to hide.

Tip #1 – Me paying you less than the cost of the hotel (he did by $10) should not be taken as an implication that I might otherwise short you, even though you already undercharged me on hotel because you forgot about the tax when you told me how much it was going to be, in advance, on the phone, before we met.

Tip#1 – You should eat the cost of a hotel you aren’t staying in, on top of gas to a city 90 minutes away even though you deliberately scheduled our time together on top of another meeting because you know my finances are tight and you wanted to help me out instead of charging a travel fee. Even though all your other clients expect to pay hotel. Even though I told you it’s disgusting to see more than one client in a day, which is the only way a girl can afford to treat a hotel like an incall location.

Tip #1 – You should start calling it 90 minutes flat, because when you spend $500 worth of time with a client for $275, after not charging them for hotel last time and spending $500 worth of time that time, too, they will just ask you for a discount instead of appreciating that no other girl out there lets the clock go like you do.

Friday, February 9, 2007

This Week’s PicksMotel Meeting (http://lafillemariee.blogspot.com)“As always though, coming together for us meant first holding, then kissing, groping, stroking, and suddenly, there we were, as always, naked, lying together, limbs intertwined on DG’s bed under the cozy, thick white duvet.”

My breasts are not safe for work - welcome to the pink ghetto (http://lustylady.blogspot.com)“I love to find out things about people’s sex lives and thinking about sex that make me see them, and the topic at hand, in a new light, and often I learn about myself that way.”Richard Evans Lee (http://www.sex-kitten.net)“An increase in sexual empathy. Being able to put yourself in the other person’s heart would curb everything from infidelity to homophobia.”

Thursday, February 8, 2007

I’m seeing Circus Guy again. Fidgeting in the hotel room, using the internet, already set up with candles on the bedside table, little cookies (last time he hadn’t eaten), condoms size XL and wearing my nifty beaded net chemise. I’ve got Peggy Lee on the CD player and spoke enough Arabic to the desk clerk for him to upgrade the room to a Deluxe King. (For the record, “Shukran” is enough.)

I’ve tried on four outfits, different permutations of bra and panties and cover-up, it’s the first time I’ve met a client without being fully dressed. He’s a little shy at the door, I’m right by the elevator, there’s a woman going up. Unlike me.

The outfit ends up off in a flash – I join him in the shower and scrub his back, using the soapsuds to massage him in long, even strokes. I kneel in the shower and take him into my mouth, remembering that he likes slow, lazy head, firm but tender, just mouth, no hands blocking the view of his rather large cock. More than halfway on him gags me, normally I’d use my hand around the base, but hey, different strokes…

We go to the bed, the spread still on (I always remember J. throwing the bedspreads off first thing into the room, “They’re covered in hooker juice!”) and I spend more time on his cock, first sideways, his hand stroking my ass, then kneeling between his legs, his hands in my hair, his hands gently on either side of my face, definitely there but not pressing, guiding me to hold still as he slowly fucks my mouth.

“Your turn,” and he guides me to kneel over his face, adjusting the pillows. The headboard is exactly the right height to rest my forehead on my folded arms, look down at his face, eyes closed, thatch of thick silver hair, smooth skin the color of the café au lait in Madrid, where I kissed Beautiful Girl and fear stopped me from so much more. I’m over him, he’s very good, his tongue on me as slow and firm and tender as his cock was in my mouth. He reaches up behind me and rubs my back, his hands are strong and soft, it’s beautiful, I can’t believe no-one’s thought of it before. There is a moment, perhaps fifteen minutes along, when the sensation is building and it’s just the right amount of intense and he slides his lips around me and gently sucks my clit and I realize, oh! This is what all the fuss is about! This is why guys are so into head, this is what they feel, why the ultimate fantasy is me or her or Britney Spears on the first album cover, looking 14 and looking up.

I almost came.

I put the condom on him, XL the right size, last time it was awkward. I ask him how he wants me and we roll over, he slides into me slowly in mish. I tease him, ask him if he wants my legs by my ears, he’s surprised I really can but it’s only a novelty for him. Roll over to cowgirl, I’m feeling very, very good, not insane-crazy-intense but slow and soft and brimming over.

I say, “I think I can come, and I’d like to, if that’s ok.”

“You come away,” he says, and the familiar motion, rubbing my clit on his pubic bone, the feeling of his wide cock slightly scraping the front of the entrance, the tip pressing hard into my cervix on the backstroke, his legs a little too bent but all right all the same, and then the soft shouts of release, trying to be moderate, trying not to frighten him, and he still says, “Wow, you’re crazy.” Maybe porn is all a lie and the rest of the women in the world are arriving in silence, their bags bumping gently in the porters’ hands, their heels clicking softly on checkerboard marble, not even echoing in the vaults of the station ceiling, while I alone am Auntie Mame stepping out of the open touring car, flinging back a boa of dead and glass-eyed animals, hollering, “I’m here, boys, get the gin!”

He swivels in me again in mish, we’ve done the complicated rollover without separating twice now, and God, he swivels like Big City Lover (My racist brain: maybe it’s a black thing, this swiveling, how would one research that? And if it is a black thing, where do they learn it? Standing on corners in hoodie shirts, “yo, man, you got to swivel in the bitch”? Shut up, dumb white girl brain, shut up, your privilege is showing). I feel him pulse in me and he comes, silently – perhaps he’s the maroon-suited porter, gold braiding and a little cap, but no, it’s his time, his money, his privilege to have the white woman on her knees, over, under, tell me again I remind him of his red-haired mother and no empty tree limbs in sight, nothing ready to bear fruit.

We lie together for a long time after he teaches me how to gently remove a condom with a warm wet “washrag”. My (monthly) blood is rusty on the cloth, if he was all white it would show. I don’t think he notices as I sponge him off.

My head on his chest, we talk – the first time he saw me it was cold and I wore layers and a hat with a feather and rushed him to the circus, and he thought I looked like Cyndi Lauper, that I was a little crazy. I tell him, I have lots of crazy, and I’m here to give him some, he needs some crazy in his life. He asks me:

“Why don’t you have a boyfriend, why don’t you get married?”

Pause. I should have a line here...

Pause. I like this guy, I like seeing him, I’d like to tell him...

Pause. Yeah, but I’m a whore.

“Well, how much about me do you really want to know?”

I don’t remember his response.

“Actually, I’ve been married for twelve years.”

His look asks the next questions.

“No, he doesn’t know. We have an open relationship. I’m not monogamous. It’s not in me.” We talk about people having different levels of sexual need.

He says, “Maybe if my wife paid more attention to me, I’d...do this less.”

He had a girlfriend for five of the first seven years. She lived in the same building, he’d call her at 3AM, go downstairs, “she’d answer the door butt-naked and we just went at it…she had a foldout sofa, we fell down between the couch and the head of the bed and just kept going. Took me about a month to get used to how tight her, (pause, uses same word I used as least offensive choice), pussy was, used to come just like that. My wife was upstairs asleep, didn’t even know I’d gone out, thought I was in the other room watching TV the whole time. Only time she wanted to have sex was when she wanted to get pregnant, go-go-go for a month or so, then back to once a month. Same thing again, all the time ‘til she get pregnant again, then back to once a month.”

I went two years once, I think but don’t say. It’s not my turn to reveal.

He likes that I’m low-profile, I don’t see many people, I don’t get into petty spats on the board (arguing on the internet, Special Olympics, we’ve all been there). He jokes that if I’d ever like to see him for free, he’s up for it. I tell him I’ll never see him for free, but we’ll always have a nice long appointment and I’ll never charge him more. We’re at two hours from the time he arrived, nearly three from when we thought we’d start, it ends up at two and a half.

I want to be open, to tell him more of the truth, to truly connect, but I still count the money he lays down. He is slightly offended. We kiss, I tell him I’m eager to see him again, to spread some more crazy around. He wants to see me again, when he can afford it. And then he’s out the door and I’m in the mirror, touching up the lipstick so the girl I see can walk across the parking lot to the restaurant where Ramen Guy is waiting.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

I've got the reality show "Cheaters" on the hotel TV, and the camera crew is egging on a wounded wife as she bangs on an escort's apartment door. They've already chased the husband out of the parking lot, filming his desperate attempts to change the subject:

(referring to light, two cameramen, boom operator, "detective" host, gaffer and best boy) "Baby, what's all this? What's all this?"

Ummm...this is the people who showed your wife the non-pixellated version of the footage I'm guessing was the escort blowing you on her balcony. This is why smart clients close the drapes.

At the door, the wife pounds and yells.

"Are you coming out here? Are you coming out here?"

Yeah, sure, I'm coming out. You want a cup of sugar, right? Or did you take in a package for me?

The wife, still in anger/anguish, says, "she's been seeing him for months!"

"He's been seeing only her, but she's been seeing a lot of different men."

"But she's been seeing him for months!"

At this point, I want to reach through the screen, grab her scrawny insert-hick-state-of-choice (let's make it Arkansas) neck, and shake her until her already exopthalmic eyes drop out and roll around, still searching for answers in the asphalt lot of yet another suburban apartment complex with shiny, scuff-resistant doors.

Lady, he's not "seeing" her. She's not "seeing" him. He's a client. She's an escort. She hugs him goodbye because he pays her. He knows she doesn't really like him. She knows he doesn't really like her. But she's got a vagina and he's got cash, and really, that's all there is to it. You're yelling at the plumber for unstoppering your disposal, when maybe you should just stop throwing not-tonight-I-have-my-period down it.

At the show's conclusion, they flash an ad for an affiliated internet dating service "where you can meet faithful singles!" Equal vocal stress on "faithful" and "singles" - bet that took a few takes.